The Naked Ninja wrote:

if(you_like_popups[and_some_distortion] == TRUE) stay.Faithful()

if(you_want_no_popups==TRUE)
use.IE7

I have used Firefox for a long time, and the only time it crashes is when either A: Rouge Javascript starts taking up 100% CPU or plugins fail to load(Most commonly Windows media player, but that is being phased out by firefox). I have never had it crash on my for a text field.

The problem with IE is that it doesn't follow a standard. You can claim that it does because the majority of the people use it, but it is nothing but a pain when I, a web developer, am trying to create a website that looks right, and I spend 90% of my time working around IE's limitations, even with IE7.

Standards are about everyone being on the same page. The web is about HTML pages, which are designed to allow everyone to see the same thing, despite browser/OS preference. IE does not seem to recognize this, and does things its own way, which is contrary to the very nature of the web. IE hurts the web, and should be protested against.

I have dropped all support for IE on my person sites because I want it to look right without having to spend hours "debugging" html/CSS. I can test in Firefox and rest assured that it looks fine in Opera, Konquerer, Safari, and all other standards compliant browsers.

I can't control which browser you use, but anyone who I build a computer for, I tell them that I will not provide any free help(As in quick questions over the phone) if they don't use Firefox, because IE has created most of the problems they have had in the past. Sure, IE is better now, but when you grow up with such a strong distrust of something, it will take more than a new version number to regain the trust.

And Firefox takes no more, if not less finagling to get it up. On top of that, if you feel like finagling, you actually have the option to make it better.

Mechana2412 wrote:

Squeegy wrote:

Hedge please close this topic.

Why? Its a topic thats getting alot of replies and is actually making some people see the truth that IE is better than Firefox in more ways than one.

Uh dude. Could you shut up for a bit? If you say anything else I might fall out of my chair laughing.

TNN, IE does have tabbed browsing... if the version you used didn't, I can understand it crashing all the time, as previous versions of IE did suck in that regard.

Daniel.Beta, so basically, we need to get the 75% of the people who aren't on the same page as everybody to get on the same page as everybody?

We can try using that song from Sesame Street... like show a page being rendered the same way by three different IE users and then the correct way by one Firefox or Opera user while the song plays, "One of these things belong together, one of these things are kind of the same. Can you guess which three of these don't belong here? Now it's time to play our game..."

Do you think that might help get the remaining 75% of the people on the same page as everybody?

You can use IE, sure, but the fact that you're using IE is contributing to this whole debate in the first place! If IE followed the W3C recommendation,

...or if everybody else followed the market conventions...

"If you all came over to my side, then we wouldn't have any argument."

W3C isn't just some "higher up" body... it's a collaboration of everyone.

Life is a collaboration of everyone. Everything else is a subset thereof. Microsoft contributed to the W3C discussion, then went and did something else. Why? They obviously had a reason. I'm no going to pretend it's a good reason or a great reason. My guess would be "market reasons." Does that mean "screwing everybody to increase their profits?" Well, maybe. But corporations are allowed to practice rational selfishiness the same as consumers are.

When choosing between two products, you're not going to buy the more expensive one if you have no other reason than it's "fair" to the producer, right? You're going to do what's in your interest.

If Microsoft wasn't so ruthless, the billions of dollars Bill Gates spends on philanthropy wouldn't even EXIST.

break their renderers

Break them? Only if you decide that IE's way is broken and the other way is fixed.

the same argument, the United States should declare Christianity its official religion and abolish the separation of church and state because the majority of its citizens are Christian.

No, but by the same argument, we heathenistic minority shouldn't act like we've had our rights infringed when somebody says "God bless you!" or complain about reasonable prosletyzing as part of the practice of the Christian faith.

People who act like the widespread practice of the Christian faith somehow impinges upon their right to practice their own faith (or lack thereof) bug me exactly the same amoung as the Firefox agitators do... and for the same reason.

In fact, you've given a great parallel example here.

As far as I've seen firefox tends to load pages the way they were designed,

This is my question, though... what do you mean by "as they were designed?"

Forget whatever sort of official seal of approval the W3C standards have, and look at it like this: there are two different ways webpages can be rendered.

If you design a page to be rendered according to the one way, you will have a page that will render correctly in browsers that use that method.

If you design it according to the other way, it will render, etc.

Now, we have the knowledge that most of the world is using the browser that renders it one of the two ways.

If a designer designs a page that renders according to the other way... isn't that the designer's decision and thus the designer's problem?

Hedgemistress wrote:

This is my question, though... what do you mean by "as they were designed?"

"As they were designed" refers to how the developer intended for the functionality to work. As an off-hand example, the DM code:
for(var/i in 1 to 10) would be "designed" to loop through the numbers 1 - 10, ascending. Firefox, Opera, and the like would all do this. IE would think of some nifty proprietary method like "1, 3, 2, 6, 4, 9, ..." or something, which through their algorithm might work faster, but if the developer intended on the sequence being sequential, and designed the page such that they had to go in order, Microsoft would break the functionality, because it decided to execute differently than expected.

That said, HTML is a pretty simple construct. When writing code, it's pretty simple to know how things should render. IE is unpredictable about many/most things, though.

Well to answer your question on a different level, the majority of the web pages we are looking at are not made by a Professional Developer.

And as far as designing goes, it's not so much that we intend to meet a specific standard as it is that in order to present the same thing in IE, you need to understand why the hell it's only happening like that in Explorer. It's not like IE gives you an idea of what they're doing or why when it comes to processing a page, it just happens.

The answer you can't seem to understand is that it's not being designed for the minority. It's being designed according to the language:

According to the language as used by a minority. That's not a language. That's a DIALECT. TNN's answer's not bad, but yours is so much plugging of ears and going "La la la la la la la."

When the "dictionary" that 75% of the world is using to understand what you write has the same definitions of the words as you're using, then you're using the language as defined.

As it stands, no. You're using the language as you'd like to see it defined, and Step 3: Complaining Bitterly that it isn't so.

It's the exact same thing except that I'm not advocating people convert to anything. (Joke in my topic heading aside... the "Hee hee." as the content should give the idea that I'm exaggerating the case.)

Should Christians become atheists just because atheists are theoretically less judgemental and arguably depend less upon unprovable premises?

(Note, I'm not trying to provoke a separate thread debating those points, hence the qualifiers.)

That's what the FF boosters are saying. They want the world to accomodate them to the exclusion of the majority, which simply does not fly.

You know I'm not of the opinion that unpopular groups and viewpoints should lack rights and protection...

...but like I said, the "heathen" minority (myself included) in a mostly Christian country like America should NOT be complaining about everybody who goes around with a Jesus fish or cross, everybody who says "God bless you.", etc. It's the majority religion... of course you're going to run into it everywhere you go.

I'd say 90% of the stories I write would not appeal to a "mainstream Christian" audience. It's my choice to write it, though. I'm not going to demand the whole world "upgrades" to secular humanism so they can view my work "correctly".